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Fieldnotes

What a reet bugger to find! With two maps, a diagram AND ocifant's GPS, we still spent over 40 minutes scouring about eight fields before we spotted it. But it was worth the hunt to see its ancient construction. There was other evidence of quite a large settlement here.

I'm confident that the remains I photographed in November aren't those of the Bodrifty settlement, as I'm familiar with that site. The pictures I took are all of remains which lie within about 200 yards or so of the Beehive Hut - the Bodrifty village is the better part of a mile to the south-east.

Whilst looking for the remains of Bosporthennis Quoit (in completely the wrong place, it turned out!), I came across the Beehive Hut, and some scattered remains which I took to be remnants of the courtyard houses which are distributed around the area, although I wouldn't want to put money on this. It was a bright late November day, after several days of heavy rainfall, and I was running out of time, so a few digital pictures were just about all I could manage. Any light that can be cast on the pictures I took is most welcome; hopefully I'll be able to add some more meaningful ones in the near future.

Miscellaneous

In addition to the late Iron Age courtyard house settlement scattered around the Beehive Hut, there is a single, earlier hut circle of simple circular plan lying to the SE at approx SW438359 within a field system.

Craig Weatherhill believes that this is actually an aboveground fogou. In "Cornovia: Ancient Sites of Cornwall & Scilly" (Cornwall Books - 1985, revised 1997 & 2000) he writes of "a scattered settlement of at least three Iron Age/Romano-British courtyard houses and several round houses in a sheltered spot at the eastern base of Hannibal’s carn. In a central position within the settlement is the intriguing 'beehive hut', now regarded as an aboveground fogou from its strong resemblance to the Phase 1 structure at Carn Euny. It had a round, corbelled chamber 4.0m across (the lintelled entrance from the south-west is modern), connect by way of a low, heavily built portal to a small, oblong chamber 3.3m by 2.1m, which was its original entrance passage (the wall blocking the south-east end is also modern). Both chambers are now roofless. The best preserved of the courtyard houses, with an adjoining paddock and walls up to 1.5m high, lies 180m to the west of the fogou; another, 60m south of the fogou, has a medieval cowshouse built inside its courtyard."